Syria Embarks On Transition

June 12, 2000|By SUSAN SACHS The New York Times

BEIRUT — The party and nation that Hafez Assad ruled for 30 years until his death this weekend moved swiftly to anoint his son, Bashar, as Syria's new president on Sunday, raising hopes that at least the nominal trappings of power in the highly militarized state may pass peacefully to a new generation.

Thousands of weeping Syrians took to the streets of Damascus, shouting their grief over the death of Assad and their devotion to his son, 34, a reserved eye doctor who inherits an insular nation still at war with Israel, in control of the government and militant groups in Lebanon, and struggling to find its place in a region that has passed it by economically.

"God, Syria and Bashar only," people chanted as they marched through the capital, which was patrolled by squadrons of uniformed security officers. Public gatherings are usually not permitted in Syria.

Cementing his claim to his father's job, Bashar Assad secured a number of new titles and positions Sunday.

Abdel-Halim Khaddam, one of Syria's two vice presidents, who are nominally running the country now, named him the country's armed forces commander, at the same time promoting him from colonel to lieutenant-general.

And the governing body of the ruling Baath Party nominated Bashar Assad for the presidency.

The nomination must be endorsed by Parliament, which must also set a date for a referendum to confirm the choice.

The Parliament has already amended the country's constitution to reduce the minimum age for a president to 34 from 40, briskly eliminating a legal obstacle to his ascension.

A relative neophyte who held no official position in the government or the party while his father was alive, Bashar Assad is unlikely to command anything close to the absolute authority of the deceased ruler.

The uncertainty caused by the death of his father has rippled beneath statements of support issued by Mideast leaders.

But the new titles and positions give the younger Assad a strong measure of public legitimacy by propelling him to the top of Syria's tight and secretive military and political hierarchy.

Quietly groomed

During the past six years, since the death of his older brother, Basil, he had been assiduously but quietly groomed for succession to the presidency.

He has steadily advanced in military rank and acted as his father's liaison to Lebanon, the client state that Syria runs politically and militarily.

In recent months, the state-controlled press credited him with helping choose a younger and supposedly more progressive set of ministers and with managing a major anti-corruption drive.

The purge targeted some of the old guard in the government and in the security services who might have been expected to resist automatically transferring their loyalty from the father to the son.

The most recent victim was Hikmat Shehabi, the former chief of the Syrian army and one-time member of Syria's negotiating team with Israel.

Shehabi was reported to have fled Syria last week.

"It would have been difficult for him to ascend among the generation of his father's age," said Joseph Samaha, a political analyst with the pan-Arab daily newspaper Al-Hayat.

"The old guard, many of whom retired due to age or for other reasons, would have had a hard time communicating with and taking orders from Bashar."

Loyalists untested

The loyalty of a group of middle-aged officers and party officials who have coalesced around him remains to be tested.

But the endorsements he has amassed less than 48 hours after his father's death virtually assure him at least of the presidency, barring any attempt by disgruntled army officers or displaced party officials to seize power in the coming weeks.

The younger Assad inherits the foreign policy issues that occupied his father, who had been ill for some time, but may not have the same freedom to strike a deal with Israel.

He has also been left an unsettled situation in Lebanon, where the recent abrupt Israeli withdrawal put pressure on Syria to rein in the militias that it had supported in the formerly occupied zone in the south.